Date: 1759

"Beware of Self-deceit, that wily cheat, / Which blinds bright Intellect with vain Conceit; / Conceit sees Nothing in its real Light, / All Things alike delude its cheated Sight."

— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)

Date: 1759

"Words are but Pictures, tru or False Designd / To Draw the Lines, and Features of the Minde"

— Butler, Samuel (1613-1680)

Date: 1759

"Whence Multitudes of reverend Men and Critics / Have got a kind of intellectual Rickets, / And by th'immoderate Excess of Study / Have found the sickly Head t'outgrow the Body.

— Butler, Samuel (1613-1680)

Date: 1760

"Why roam abroad? Since still, to Fancy's eyes, / I see, I see thy lovely form arise."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1761

"When Dinner comes, amid the various Feast, / That crowns your genial Board, where every Guest, / Or grave, or gay, is happy, and at home, / And none e'er sighed for the Mind's Elbow-room"

— Armstrong, John (1708/9-1779)

Date: 1761, 1790

"Our reason judges better than our eyes"

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)

Date: 1762

"'Rest thou,' I said, 'behind my shield; rest in peace, thou beam of light! the gloomy chief of Sora will fly, if Fingal's arm is like his soul."

— Ossian; Macpherson, James (1736-1796)

Date: 1762-3

"[T]he five senses in alliance [may] / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroke, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762

"Therefore, I have no one notion, / That is not form'd, like the designing / Of the peristaltick motion; / Vermicular; twisting and twining; / Going to work / Just like a bottle-skrew upon a cork."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1762, 1781

"Bear back, false Winchester, thy proffer'd Bliss, / Weigh Crowns and Kingdoms with a deed like this, / Far, far too light in Wisdom's eye they seem, / Nor shake the scale, while Reason holds the beam."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)